Our favorite semiliterate conservative, Paul at Political Spectrum, just can’t seem to stop telling untruths about libertarianism. In his latest, he says “[i]t may not be so that libertarians themselves reject, out of hand, all tradition. Even Jefferson did not go as far as Rousseau in rejecting all traditional norms.”
What does Paul mean by “traditional norms”? Does he mean that Jefferson asserted that the Ten Commandments were lies? Well, Jefferson didn’t do that. Does he mean that Jefferson claimed that rudeness was okay? Or that property and the family should be abolished? No, Jefferson didn’t do those things. What Jefferson did was reject the notion that the government must tell people what to do with their lives. I have already quoted Jefferson’s letter to William Johnson in which he explains this. Paul, of course, avoids specifics, because the truth is in the details.
Libertarians distinguish between sins and crimes. Conservatives do not. Therefore when a libertarian says that something ought not to be illegal, Paul assumes that that means that the libertarian thinks it is moral, as well. And so he says things like “libertarians do not feel as beholden to established customs as we conservatives.” Now, in the past six or seven posts alone, I have quoted from John Locke, Algernon Sidney, John Milton, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and others. Paul, perhaps ignorant of these important thinkers, claims that I am not “beholden” to tradition, despite my abiding familiarity with these great men. And if he mean social customs, well, you name an established custom, and I probably follow it. In fact, I abide by a variety of established customs that are now considered so quaint that few observe them. (For instance, I don’t like it when people I don’t know call me by my first name—something that apparently doesn’t bother Paul, since he doesn’t tell us his last name. ) Most importantly, I submit that the moral authoritarianism Paul prescribes has never been an American tradition; it is something with which America has always defined her politics by contrast, and Paul’s hostility to the views of Jefferson and his followers is representative of his general rejection of America’s political tradition. I am the one defending tradition here, not Paul.
“Since [libertarians think] humans must feel unconstrained to do as they deem fit and proper, anything which even remotely stultifies the drive for freedom is disdained.” Ah, here we go again—libertarians don’t believe in morality, and just want to have sex with dogs and so forth. Any evidence that libertarians think people should be “unconstrained to do as they deem fit”? None is given. “The libertarian philosophy promotes the idea that each person can discover their [sic] own unique truth.” Quote us a single libertarian thinker who has ever said this, Paul. I demand to see the evidence. I want to see a respected libertarian who has ever said that tradition doesn’t matter, or who has ever endorsed complete moral subjectivism.
I loved this part, too: remember that Paul said that he didn’t think the state should coerce us into living the lives of happily selfless slaves? Now he says that “[w]e can so order the state to promote certain values, but how to promote values, and what values to be promote [sic]? These are annoying ambiguous phrases, but they are not meant to be black and white, cut and dry ideas. They cannot be.” Har hardy har. It was pretty cut and dry for John Geddes Lawrence, wasn’t it? When Paul uses the word “promote,” what he means is coerce. He means that the state is going to force you to abide by (in Paul’s classic phrase) your “moral duty to take cognizance of [your] neighbors, and to act in whatever way possible to contribute to the greater good.”
He makes this clear when he asks, rhetorically, “can societies restrict behavior that it deems [sic] offensive or unruly?” Of course they can. Conservatives do it all the time.
Paul says that “[l]ibertarians argue (for the most part) that there should not even be…minimal restrictions. That is the main source of our disagreement.” Any evidence of this? Of course not. No, once again this is a lie about what libertarianism argues. Libertarianism argues that there ought not to be restrictions on personal behavior that harms no third party. Conservatism argues that there ought to be restrictions on personal behavior that “harms Society.” Paul’s argument, that we can ban act v so as to prevent individuals from committing acts x, y, and z, is an argument which—as I have said—imposes no limiting principle on the state.
Somehow recognizing that he is calling for a totalitarian state in which our most private actions are subject to government regulation, Paul then flails about saying things like “Government MUST allow as much free space for people to make their decisions on their own, free of coercion.” But why, Paul? Give us a reason. Could it be, perhaps, that all men are created equal, with the right to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, with a government existing only to restrain them from injuring one another? No, that can’t be, ‘cause that would be “Rousseauistic.” Instead, Paul has argued all along that government exists to make sure that we all obey our alleged moral duty to live our lives in whatever way contributes to the common good. It exists to “promote” this alleged virtue and “restrict behavior that it deems offensive.” So whence does he derive this notion that government must allow us free space? This seems like a little atomistic individualism accidentally dropped into his collectivist porridge.
Subconsciously recognizing that these two principles cannot be combined, Paul reverts to vague language: “Much of this discussion revolves [sic] a great deal of abstraction and quite blurry lines.” No. The lines are not blurry. The lines are quite clear. The lines are as follows:
- Conservatives (of whom Paul is a very fine example by the way) do not distinguish between sins and crimes. They believe that you are incapable of running your life and living morally without being overseen by the coercive authority of the state which exists to “restrict” and your behavior to ensure that you serve Society. They want to censor speech, ban drugs, regulate private, adult consensual sexual behavior, and force people into religious services to protect Society.
- Libertarians do distinguish between sins and crimes. We believe some behaviors, such as drug abuse, or sexual promiscuity, or ingratitude, rudeness, laziness, drunkenness, or ignorance, are immoral. But we also believe that they do not harm any nonconsenting third person, and therefore that the state has no business interfering. As soon as a person harms a third person, however, the state ought to intervene and punish the wrongdoer.
Those lines are clear. The only obfuscation here is Paul’s, and the reason it exists is to disguise the fact that he is promoting a state with no limits.
“We can’t force people to do x,y, and z,” says Paul, “but can we restrict v in order that less people choose to do x, y, and z?” Well, to once more quote the great libertarian John Milton,
you [should] not enact so many new laws as you abolish old, which do not operate so much as warnings against evil, as impediments in the way of good; and…you [should] retain only those which are necessary, which do not confound the distinctions of good and evil, which, while they prevent the frauds of the wicked, do not prohibit the innocent freedoms of the good, which punish crimes, without interdicting those things which are lawful, only on account of the abuses to which they may occasionally be exposed. For the intention of laws is to check the commission of vice, but liberty is the best school of virtue, and affords the strongest encouragements to the practice.
Ding! I win! I really should stop here, but once the pon farr starts, it’s hard to drop the matter.
Incidentally, before stopping I’ll mention that my comments likening Paul’s and Babbit’s views to the Rousseauean concept of the General Will were too hasty. There are some distinctions between the two—Babbit’s version of the General Will is an idealized sort of will imposed on society by “intermediate institutions,” and which is not limited by any natural laws, while Rousseau’s is an abstract concept which is imposed on the people by the legislator, and which is, in theory, limited by a sort of categorical imperative: it supposedly represents the unanimous will of the people, if only their will could be divorced from personal interest. I believe these differences are trivial, however, and I agree with Harry Jaffa’s argument, expressed, I believe, in A New Birth of Freedom, that conservatism of the Kirk/Babbit/Nisbet/Weaver variety has far more in common with Rousseau than does anything Jefferson ever said.
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